Sass's Sunday Salvation Show #2

Although I must say that link response last week was lukewarm, I'm no quitter.  I am hoping that, if I stay with it, more and more folks will want to be a part of my Sunday Salvation Show!  One day, I'll have to have my very own internet -  muah, ha, ha!


Well, at least I have a sense of humor about it, right?

So here goes:

The rules:

Share something you've done recently.  Take a minute to look at someone else's link, and leave a comment - we're all in this together!  Please consider becoming a follower of Sassafras Salvation, and take a Sunday Salvation Show button to remind you and others to come back again and again.

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Old School, New Cool #7

Well, seven is indeed a lucky number, and it's the number that brings this series to a close.  This is the book that started it all:

This book, published in 1960, has an amazing number of style choices that seem to foreshadow the future.  So many really hot fashion trends that echo in today's design seem to have had their inception in 1960.  We've looked at showplace staircases, chalkboards, maps, horizontal stripes, and unusually clever color combinations, among others.  Today's our last Old School - New Cool trend.

Here it is:  the pendant lamp.  And this picture, I just love:

Is that collection of pendants unbelievably beautiful?  Those coppery discs?  And NINE pendants?  Beautiful excess.  What in the world do you think they needed that lamp in the corner for?  Kinda crazy, is it not?  But gorgeous, no?  The pendant has been hot for a year or three.  I've seen an amazing number of DIY iterations.

Consider this ping-pong lamp:

Or this set of bottle pendants:

Or this vintage globe pendant:

Or this paper starburst pendant:

Or a multitude of tiny pendants, made from vintage tumblers:

Or a faceted pendant light, made from childhood memories:

The possibilities are endless.  But it all began back in 1960.  There's just nothing new under the sun!

Love, 

Sass

Free Christmas Roads Printable

I've made a really nice little printable for you to enjoy this holiday season.  Go here.  Print it; frame it; remember that our best home is always in Christ. 

Love,

Sass

Crochet Giveaway!

What you're looking at here is a good start on my Christmas gift-giving.  I have mentioned before that my fall-back craft is crochet.  And I can't think of anything easier, and more useful, to crochet than dishcloths.    

This is approximately sixty of them, done up in little tied packages of two to four to a set.

They are the easiest things in the world to make, since the only counting I have to do is the first chain.  Every stitch after that is just more of the same. 

I don't do anything fancy - although I have seen plenty of fanciness in this kind of project.  I figure - it's a dishcloth - who really cares how fancy it is?  It's bright; it's sturdy; it's utilitarian.  And everyone can use them.  Who doesn't need dishcloths?  You can give them to everyone from your just-out-of college nephew to your elderly aunt.

But here's the beauty part.  See that four-pack of deep turquoise?  That one could be yours.  Just a couple of things to do...............

1.  Consider following Sassafras Salvation.  I'd never require it.  I don't want you to follow if you're not really interested in following.  But I plan to be around a while, and I do my best to post fairly frequently.  I try to make the content interesting, even when it's just about me and my life.  So, at least consider it.

2.  Here's the requirement:  Leave a comment.  Make sure your email is somehow attached to your comment.  Unfortunately, unless I can contact you, I don't know how to be sure that I can get your prize to you.

I am thankful for each and every one of you who come to Sassafras Salvation to catch up with me.  This is my way of giving you back a little of what you give to me.  I'd love it if yours was the comment I randomly drew and if you could, in a few days, open a little soft package of turquoise dishcloths for your kitchen.

Yup, that'd be terrific.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Love,

Sass

P.S.  I'll only count comments through the month of November 2011.   I'll be drawing from the comments on December 1st, and I'll be sure to post who the winner was.

Brining the Turkey

I am cooking for a crew this Thanksgiving, so I have a sizeable turkey. Somewhere in the range of 20 pounds. As of this morning, I set the turkey to brine. Here's how to do it. 

1. Go to Home Depot or Lowe's or some other home center and buy a plastic five gallon bucket. Wash it out well. 

2. Fill it about 4" deep with clean, cold water. Add two cups of salt, and stir until the salt dissolves. Now you have brine. 

3. Rinse your turkey and remove the giblets, particularly if you simmer them to make giblet gravy. 

4. Lower your turkey into the brine. Fill the rest of the bucket with water. 

5. Feel very fortunate if you have a spare refrig to put him away for a day. That's what I did. 

Thanksgiving morning, dump out the brine, give the turkey a light rinse and prepare it as usual. Brining is a great secret for adding juiciness and flavor to your holiday bird. Love, Sass

Sunday Salvation Show #1

My very first linky party!  I'm so excited.  I love to surf others' parties, and I hope that many of you will come on along to Sassafras Salvation every Sunday and share your sweetest surprises!

A few rules:

Please make sure that your link is for your shared post and not to your main blog page.

Please grab my button to link back to Sassafras Salvation on your site:

 

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Please do not post items you have for for sale in an Etsy store or some similar online marketing method.

Please take the time to browse some of the other shared projects, and leave a nice comment or two behind.  We're all in this together!
 

Old School, New Cool #6

See this book?  It was published 51 years ago.  It's officially an antique.  But it's a really amazing book, and I'll tell you why.  The compilers of the decorating ideas contained in this book were positively prescient. 

pre - scient

[presh-uh nt, pree-shuh nt] adjective

having prescience, or knowledge of things or events before they eist or happen; having foresight:

The prescient economist was one of the few to see the financial collapse coming. 

The ideas in this book were au courant for 1960, but they are being replayed again and again in 2011.  Old School becomes New Cool!  In addition to the actual 'looks' shown throughout its pages, the book also contains some really basic, but helpful design information.  Consider this advice on selecting colors in design:

I've blown them up a bit, for ease of reading, below.

 

 

 Even though it's really basic information, it still stands the test of time, doesn't it?  Just another way to use Old School ideas to make New Cool decor.

Love,

Sass 

A Thanksgiving Printable

I made a pretty little printable to add to your enjoyment of this holiday.  This beautiful quote by Thornton Wilder, one of America's most revered writers, is sure to speak to your heart.

If you're to be someone's guest for Thanksgiving, wouldn't it be a lovely hostess gift?

Go here, print it out, frame it up, and thoughtfully enjoy!

Love,

Sass

P.S. Sharing at these parties.

I Dreamed of Pottery Barn...........!

I was browsing through the Pottery Barn kids catalog the other night, and something caught my eye, but it wasn't for sale in the catalog.  Just an item that they used to round out the room decor, but didn't offer for sale.

Here it is:

Do you see it, there on the wall?  Here it is again, closer:

I liked the softness of the letters.  It appeared to me as if they were drawn freehand onto burlap, then embroidered using a thick, nubbly yarn in a row of french knots.  I figured I could knock that out in an evening.  And I did.  

Here's mine:

My letters are a bit more curlicue than PB's, but I like that.

I added a little extra embellishment to the 'M'.  This little swallowtail is made of styrene, but the paint took pretty well.  The original brown shows through the blue paint so nicely.  You can really see the feather detail.

I shopped thrift stores to find the frames.  I wanted them mismatched,  and I used a little jar of acrylic craft paint in blue to unify them.  I removed the glass because these are so dimensional.

I shopped my own fabric stacks to find a nice rich brown to "mat" out the burlap.  Then I just sewed them together - first, strips along the two vertical sides, then two more strips along the horizontal top and bottom.

I didn't exactly 'style' these well to show them off.  They're just propped up on my grandmother's china cabinet (and isn't it beautiful?).  I don't know yet whether I'm keeping or selling them.  

The total project may have cost me $5.  I have no idea what PBK might have sold these for, but I'm suspecting it may have been a bit more than that!

Are you knocking off big time decor here and there?

Love,

Sass

P.S.  Partying here.

A Great Little Find

So you know I live in Montana.  Don't be hatin'.

MMM and I took a drive to Helmville for their annual pre-Christmas craft show on Sunday.  Just because.  It was a terribly windy day, and really variable weather, which is standard for Montana.  We took the route up over MacDonald Pass (here is the live webcam).  It was a bit snowy, and the highway crew was putting up those reflector extenders that allow you to figure out the edge of the road when the snow piles up so high that it covers the standard reflectors.  But it was beautiful, with fast-moving clouds, and great patches of sun and shade across the landscape:

When we passed through the tiny town of Avon, I begged MMM to turn in.  There was a little white church with a steeple, and I just wanted to drive past.  He humored me, and we drove down the tiny main street.  Toward the west end, the street took a little zig to the south and we came across the Birdseye Mercantile:

We went inside, and what a jewel! This was a antique, quilt, yarn, and gift shop.  It was built in the late 1800's, serving this community as a general store.  The proprietress told a story of a 90-year-old local man who remembered that, as a child, he had come into the store and the rafters were hung with bunches of bananas.  This, in a time when fresh fruit was an extreme rarity.  This place had such a great atmosphere, and an enormous stove right in the center of the store made everything warm and cozy.  

I'm just going to let you salivate along with me.  Each corner we turned held a surprise better than the one before. 

I finally had to leave.  I came because of curiosity, but I was unprepared for any real purchases.  But you can bet I'll go back! Don't you wish you could come along?

Never fear - when I do, I'll share my finds with you!

Love, 

Sass

Tam O'Shanter

A "tam o'shanter" is a Scottish-style hat, traditionally worn by men. As an example:

But I crocheted a little tam o'shanter (which, by the by, was named for a character in a Robert Burns poem), and I think it would look great on any girl.  Here I am, modelling it:

It was a quick and easy project.  Again, as usual, no pattern, because I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-girl when it comes to crochet.   But making a beret is extremely easy: beginning at the crown, single crochet around and around, adding stitches to increase and maintain the work flat - you don't want a peaked crown.  Then, when you've reached the circumference you want, start decreasing stitches until you reach the hat's opening.  When it will fit your head nicely, stop.  I changed yarn on the underside, going from solid brown to a nice blue/brown variegate.  Then I thought I would make a scarf to match.  It's nice and warm, and I think it will make a great Christmas gift for someone this year.

Do you think you'll make a few gifts this year?  Happy crocheting!

Love,

Sass

P.S.  Partying HERE.

My Literary Turkey

 I think that Anthropologie started it all with beauties like these:

Frankly, all those animal heads don't hold a lot of interest for a Montana girl.  I have seen plenty of the real thing.  Endless men in camo holding their latest trophy up for the camera, then spending hundreds of dollars for taxidermy so that they can re-live their glorious elk/muley/whitetail/bear/mountain lion/fish tale.  And lots of good humored women tolerating that thing on their bed/living/rec room wall.  So the idea of an animal head, papier mache or otherwise, just doesn't do it for me.  

Then Beth at Home Stories A to Z inspired me with her post on how to make feathers out of book pages. I couldn't help myself.  Because Thanksgiving's almost here, and I got inspired. I went to Google to check out a real turkey.

 My model?  Pretty good, dontcha think?

Check out my turkey:

He's made from a core of rumpled newspaper and painter's tape.  His legs are kebab skewers pumped up with more newspaper and painter's tape.  Skewers provided the stiffness for the wings and the rear grouping of tailfeathers.  His head was hand-molded in two halves from a pile of wet toilet paper.  Yep, you read that right.  Wet toilet paper.  You know how wet toilet paper dries in a hard little lump (like when somebody threw it onto the bathroom ceiling in high school?  Oh, nobody did that at your high school?  Nevah mind.)  I just molded it onto a plate, trying hard to mirror the two sides.  I glued them together when they were fully dry. 

I used Mod Podge throughout for paper stiffener.  It was great because it dried fast, and was pretty darned hard, even when I had to start adding the feather assemblies.

 All in all, I think he turned out pretty well.  And he adds a little sumpthin' to our mantel display.  

Gobble, gobble!

Love,

Sass

P.S. Partying HERE.